Some MeFites can’t read for content, but I still got decent help from Ask MeFi regarding what appears to be an ailing iBook. Well … not really great help, because none of the advice made things better, but I got some useful answers that pretty much confirm I might well be fucked on this one.

If I see a single comment from Burton about this, my foot is going to travel down the stairs, out the door, up 99E, down Prescott, around the corner, bank off the watertower, and kick his smug ass. Believe that.

Since we’re OTOH’ing a lot this evening, Mr. Burton and Ms. Riegsecker did get Ben a wonderful Christmas present: A remote control car.

It’s big and round and red, and it only knows “forward” and “back up while turning,” but two buttons is enough for Ben, who clearly thinks it’s the neatest thing he’s ever seen.

It was kind of weird for me to watch him playing with it this afternoon. At first he had no clue that there was a remote control involved in making it go. He chased it around the room holding on to its antenna for a while. Then he sort of got it in his head that the buttons could make the loud, high-pitched “eeeeEEEEeeeeEEEEE” sound of the motor, and then he realized that the buttons made it move, with no need to be near it.

Sorry … the weird part wasn’t him working that out. That part was cool. The weird part was realizing that he’s not even two years old yet, and that a toy that can roll around the room without visible cable or string is just part of his reality now. I remember my first remote control car after a disappointing string of Evel Knievel toys that pretty much went “forward” or “wildly off course,” and it was an event that happened not long before my voice changed. He also understands that the t.v. can be controlled over the ether. So, you know … good for him. He’ll probably also have the option to be “ben@puddingbowl.org” for life, though I’d guess all the cool kindergartners will talk him into registering his own domain and not telling me about it.

Anyhow … he loves the car. It’s fun watching him have fun with it.

What else?

Last night was Christmas dinner at Michael & Sue’s. I ate turkey (for the second holiday meal this season), and it tasted very good. Michael and Sue thoughtfully packaged some up for me to have.

“Hold it, Mike. You said you wouldn’t eat anything with a face!”

See … I’ve decided I’m a meat-eating vegetarian, which kind of boils down to this:

I’ll eat dairy, though I prefer nothing from cows shot up with hormones/drugs and it makes me happy when the egg carton says the chickens were given the run of a yard somewhere. So for people who say vegetarian and mean “vegan,” I’m fucked out of the gate.

I won’t buy meat for myself at a restaurant or the grocery store. When I read “free-range chickens” on the product labels, I think “Shuffleboard at Auschwitz.” Obviously not totally that … but close, to the extent “cruelty free” is splitting some fine hairs.

But I’m no stranger to splitting fine hairs, because if I go to someone’s house and they’re serving up a turkey or a burger or a fish, I’ll eat some. I like the taste of it, and I don’t perceive myself as creating more demand … they bought enough to feed everybody. Maybe they bought more than they would have because there were seven people at the table and only six drumsticks to a package, but I’m not going to worry about that, because I’m guessing it doesn’t work out like that often in the circles I’m in.

In some camps, I reckon I’m the biggest fake vegetarian Don’t-Bee who ever could be. I can live with that. My friends know my preferences even if they don’t share them, but when they come to my home for dinner they know not to expect meat.

The fact is, though, that as much as I’m not real happy with the process of making meat happen, I still like to eat it. I’m not repulsed by it, which might be a tell-tale that my convictions aren’t viscerally felt, but I can live with that, too. It’s just the way I’m doing things.

One last clarification on re-read: When I talk about “nausea” re: reading the labels of “cruelty free” meats, it’s an intellectual thing. Like the way I chortle when I go down in the basement and see political textbooks that describe conservatives as fiscally responsible and adverse to foreign adventures. No, really … I get kind of dizzy and confused after reading stuff like that … then I sit down on the steps and breath in the musty, damp air for a few moments and decide a whole generation of political texts are going to be worth less than a penny a title at Powell’s if I ever try to convince some teenaged book purchasing clerk that I didn’t actually just dummy up a bunch of fake textbooks with insane lies about isolationist, penny-pinching Republicans.

Then I stand on wobbly legs and go upstairs where the muffled *thwump* of distant artillery and the staccato rattle of small arms fire reminds me that the War on Christmas rages on.